Will Supreme Court consider nikah halala, polygamy challenges as well?

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court, while striking down instant triple talaq, indicated that two other contentious issues — nikah halala and polygamy — were still under challenge in court. Both practices have been blamed as contributors to the poor socioeconomic status of Muslim women.

Nikah halala is the practice of temporary marriage and divorce that makes it permissible for an already divorced woman to remarry the previous husband in certain sects.

The top court had said during the triple talaq hearing that it would not deal with these issues that were challenged by activists as anti-women.

But in the triple talaq judgement, outgoing Chief Justice JS Khehar, speaking for himself and Justice Abdul Nazeer, seems to have suggested otherwise. “The practices of ‘polygamy’ and ‘halala’ among Muslims are already under challenge before us,” the CJI recorded.

Justice Khehar is the administrative head of the top court and takes a call on whether the court hear these issues as well.

Justice Khehar is demitting office on Sunday and the next CJI, Dipak Misra, will have to take a call on whether the court should hear these issues.

The All India Personal Law Board, which had argued against striking down triple talaq, had opposed any court intervention in these issues as well. But the central government wants the court to also outlaw these.

During the triple talaq hearing, the then attorney general Mukul Rohatgi said such practices were social and not religious and urged the court to step in.

In the Quran as well, he contended, it appeared that the prevalence of polygamy in pre-Islamic society was sought to be regulated and restricted, so as to treat women better than how they were in pre-Islamic times. “… practice of polygamy was a social practice rather than a religious one, and therefore, would not be protected under Article 25 (fundamental right to religion),” he had said.

The All India Muslim Personal Law Board had deprecated the practice as “undesirable” but didn’t want the court to intervene in it.